


from the gallows

by anandrew



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Flash Fic, Gen, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, The Imagination Room (Sanders Sides), demus - Freeform, dukeceit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27603608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anandrew/pseuds/anandrew
Summary: after four years of remus having run away to the imagination, janus embarks to bring him back only to find he might be a little too late.
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders
Kudos: 18





	from the gallows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lezzylittle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lezzylittle/gifts).



> i wrote this as a flash fiction submission for my creative writing portfolio & a few people on reddit asked for it, so here you go.

He’s unsure how, but there’s a certainty to the realization that the sound guiding him forward is rope against wood. Trying to match the noise to a memory fails him, however; he thinks it might just be one of those ingrained parts of human nature, akin with the ability to separate a bee’s hum from a fly’s. Even odder, the repetition is already wearing a hole in his stomach. It grows louder with each step, deeper with each reiteration of fibers swinging. He hasn’t been here before, the winding path he’s found himself on is unfamiliar beneath his feet but he can’t tear his eyes away from searching upwards, perhaps a bit paranoid that the canopy is inching lower as the forest thickens. The old creaking branches stretch out like fingers wrapped around his head, singing a resounding guess who as the compressed air strangles him. There’s only one person here, he reminds himself, chilled by the shadows that dart silently from tree to tree.

Before he’s rounded the corner and entered the abrupt clearing to witness the sound himself finally, the worst has already settled in his mind deep like the roots of a twisting oak; the seed of an idea wrapped in a pinecone coffin. Even if he is wrong, the fabricated image is enough to haunt him for years, he’s sure. When his vision adjusts to the sunny field, his yes search almost frantically, light fracturing like a yellow hued kaleidoscope, skewing his directionals before they finally rest on the splintered wood, unraveling rope, the torn spectators with hands poking at holes in their pockets. He realizes then that it’ll be decades, rather, until this memory fades at all.

The hanged man’s name rips from his throat before he even registers the possibility that he’d be unable to hear him. The haunting that’s seeped through his marrow is replaced all at once with adrenaline. Like his mouth, his feet move without thought, propelling him up the rickety steps. He is a short man, he always has been, and until now he’s never minded it. Until now he’s never needed a reason to be tall enough to hoist someone up, never needed the muscle to do so. A dancer’s physique isn’t cut out for this kind of lifting, he quickly discovers. It’s a struggle, balancing himself, balancing the vomit creeping up his throat, balancing the man on his shoulder, side, arm, anything to give the rope enough slack.  
He looks to the small crowd as the dead weight of his lover rocks against him. They stare at their own feet, shuffle in the dirt like village idiots. 

“Help him!” He yells, a sob threatening on his tongue. “Why aren’t you helping him?!” His words blow wind between their ears, rustling nothing in its wake.

“He told us not to,” a voice answers from behind. His head whips around, gaze rests on a soft featured woman, dark hair contrasting light eyes. She holds out an ornate knife in her palms like ritual. Blinking between her face and the offered object incredulously, he pauses before snatching it.

“And you _listened_?”


End file.
